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SpaceX’s rocket reusability dream is within reach after fastest recovery yet
SpaceX and CEO Elon Musk’s rocket reusability dream appears to be within reach for the first time ever after technicians managed to retract the most recently-launched Falcon 9 booster’s landing legs and bring it horizontal in record time.
On the heels of a SpaceX’s second orbital-class Falcon 9 launch, landing, and recovery just this month, the recovery milestone could mean that booster B1059 is being prepared for the fastest turnaround in the company’s history. Together, with two Starlink launches now complete less than two weeks into June 2020 and a third internet satellite mission scheduled as early as June 22nd, the odds are better than ever that SpaceX will be able to pull off a record launch cadence heading into the second half of the year.
Averaged out, a sustained frequency of one launch every ~7 days would give SpaceX the ability to perform more than 50 orbital launches annually. In fact, just earlier this year, an environmental impact assessment completed for upgrades at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Pad 39A revealed plans for as many as 70 annual launches from SpaceX’s two Florida pads by 2023.
Technically, SpaceX has already demonstrated that those two Florida launch pads – KSC Pad 39A and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) LC-40 – are able to support 60-70 annual launches when pushed to their limits, with the latter pad recently performing two launches in just nine days for a potential maximum of 40 launches in one year. If SpaceX can pull off four Falcon 9 launches in 27 days, as it’s currently scheduled to do, the company will have already come a majority (75%) of the way to demonstrating that its fleet of Falcon rockets is also up to the task.
Currently the newest flown booster in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 fleet, the company has also wasted no time processing B1059 after ~8 am EDT return to Port Canaveral, kicking off landing leg retraction scarcely eight hours after berthing. B1059’s first sea recovery was also the second use of drone ship Of Course I Still Love You’s (OCISLY) upgraded Octagrabber, a tank-like robot used to keep technicians safe while remotely securing Falcon boosters on the high seas.
Octagrabber 2.0
By all appearances, SpaceX is using a new recovery method debuted with Falcon 9 booster B1058 earlier this month for the second time. With that significant operational tweak, the company no longer has to crane Falcon 9 boosters off of the drone ship before it can begin landing leg retraction – itself a process that’s barely a year old. By entirely supporting a booster with an upgraded Octagrabber robot and retracting its legs in situ, SpaceX can completely skip a recovery processing step, only lifting the rocket once it’s ready to be broken over (brought horizontal) and loaded onto a transporter.
Unsurprisingly, on its first use, the improved efficiency allowed SpaceX to process a booster faster than any before it, breaking the previous record of ~1.9 days from port arrival to departure on a horizontal transporter. Now, B1059 is already on pace to beat B1058’s weeks-old recovery turnaround record. Extra-efficient recovery processing and the unprecedentedly rapid booster reuse it could soon enable will be crucial if SpaceX hopes to sustain a cadence of 3-6 Falcon 9 launches per month over the next few years.
Such a cadence is a necessity for the expedient deployment of the 12,000 to 40,000-satellite Starlink internet constellation. With SpaceX all but guaranteed to demonstrate three Starlink launches in a single month (in fact, less than three weeks), the company is making rapid progress in the right direction.
Speeding through recovery
In fact, as of writing, Falcon 9 B1059 has already had all four landing legs retracted and was lifted off drone ship OCISLY, broken over, and placed on SpaceX’s custom booster transporter less than 10 hours after it arrived in port. A step further, SpaceX took an incredible 8-9 hours after docking to bring the booster horizontal, crushing the previous record – ~27 hours – by a factor of three or more.
Given that unprecedented expediency, it wouldn’t be crazy to imagine that SpaceX could be aiming for a record-breaking booster turnaround on one of its next few Starlink launches, scheduled June 22nd and sometime in July. Held by the late booster B1056, SpaceX’s current turnaround record (the time between two launches) is 62 days, while the company and CEO Elon Musk’s ultimate reusability goal is to fly the same booster twice in just 24 hours.
Drone ship recoveries, of course, will almost always require at least a few extra days to travel back to port. Still, the fact that 99% of the processing needed to transport a booster can now be finished in as few as ~8 hours is the first unequivocal proof that a 24-hour turnaround is within SpaceX’s reach – so long as the rocket lands on land or the time in transit is excluded.
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SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon reached the ISS in under eight hours, and NASA confirmed a record.
SpaceX now owns every spot on the list of the five fastest trips a U.S. spacecraft has ever made to the International Space Station, and its newest entry beat the old mark by more than four hours.
Crew Dragon Grace docked to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. ET on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. NASA confirmed the milestone in a space station blog update, writing that the flight “marked the fastest launch‑to‑docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station.”
The previous U.S. record also belonged to Dragon. SpaceX’s uncrewed CRS-31 cargo mission reached the station in a little over 12 hours in November 2024. The fastest crewed trip before last week was Crew-11, which took 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, according to Space.com.
A post that Elon Musk reposted on Monday filled out the rest of the ranking. Behind Crew-13, CRS-31 and Crew-11 sit Axiom’s Ax-2 mission at 15 hours and 35 minutes and NASA’s Crew-4 at 15 hours and 44 minutes. All five flew on Dragon.
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Crew-13 carried NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA had projected a docking around 8 p.m. ET, as Teslarati reported the day before launch, and Dragon arrived nearly an hour early. Our launch day coverage noted that the flight was lined up to be the quickest Crew Dragon transit yet.
The speed came from timing more than hardware. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station “was in an opportune spot in space,” which let Dragon start closing the gap almost immediately after reaching orbit. “This is close to the fastest it could be,” she added. Most Crew Dragon flights still take close to a day, using a series of Draco thruster burns to raise and phase their orbit before arrival.
Dragon’s next job at the station is a departure. NASA said Monday it is targeting 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, for Crew-12 to undock, setting up a splashdown off the coast of California around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday. Clearing that port makes room for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final set of iROSA solar arrays.
Dragon remains NASA’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner stays grounded, and the agency recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
